Hey Steve! Very nice! I’ve been working on a pair of train whistles for my son and nephew for Christmas, and was about to head out and put some finish on them when I realized I hadn’t seen this week’s video yet… Imagine my surprise when I see this week’s video is about… Train Whistles!!! :)

My bench-top drill press isn’t tall enough to drill into the blanks I was using though (and I don’t trust my skills to keep the holes straight anyway), so I made square “tubes” on the router table instead (Got the idea from here: http://lumberjocks.com/LateNightOwl/blog/16193). I think you probably get better sound quality with the round holes, but I found that by routing a square channel the whole way through the blank and then using square plugs to block off the “tubes”, I could easily tweak the pitch of each tube by adjusting the position of the plugs. This allows you to get a perfect train-whistle chord (I did some quick research, and it looks like most train whistles use a 1, 3, 5, 6 chord). Since you need the “tubes” open to make them on the router, they’re fully accessible before you glue the cover over the tubes, which allows you to easily move the plugs around.

Here’s what mine look like (the one in back still needs to be sanded – sorry). Pretty much the same way Steve made his, with some obvious differences. These are also 4-note whistles – 2 on top, two on the bottom.